What is the impact of website downtime on local SEO rankings?

Direct Answer:

Frequent or prolonged website downtime severely damages SEO rankings. If Google's crawler encounters a server error repeatedly, it will quickly de-index the site to protect its users from dead links.

Key Details & Context

• •Crawl Budget: Server timeouts waste Google's 'crawl budget', meaning new content won't be indexed.
• •Bounce Rate: If users click a ranking link and the site fails to load, they 'bounce' back to Google, signaling poor quality to the algorithm.
• •Resolution: Investing in premium hosting with 99.9% uptime guarantees is essential for maintaining hard-earned SEO positions.